arts

Every December, South Florida welcomes artists and becomes a canvas for Art Basel. And with so much art surrounding us this week, we want to know how you distinguish masterpieces from mounds of junk.

We made a Twitter robot @WhatIsArtWLRN that shares photos of art taken during Miami Art Week and asks you: What is art? Does this count as art to you? Join the game by sharing interesting pieces you see on Instagram or Twitter. Tell us what you think of these works and we'll share your impressions.

If you're in Miami for the first week of December, you're about to be inundated with a tsunami of art as thousands flock to the sights and fairs of Miami Art Week. To help you parse out a schedule of must-sees from the myriad of events to choose from, we've compiled the (nearly) all-inclusive WLRN Guide to Miami Art Week 2014.

Music is the heartbeat of Art Basel week. From South Beach to Wynwood, the city streets exude soul-pounding bass, crescendos of funk, the juke-joint stomp of rhythm and blues and everything in between.

That aural mixture fuses with the energy of hundreds of thousands of awestruck participants, the art that surrounds them and the huge amounts of money that make it all happen.

The result is a one-of-a-kind milieu of technology, art, commerce, tourism and the cathartic release of everyone’s appreciation of it all. Especially locals.

Faena Art has announced it plans to build a new arts and cultural center in Miami Beach.

The 50,000 square-foot building, which was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Netherlands-based architectural firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), will be located on Collins Avenue and 33rd Street.

It won't be built with a typical square design, though. Instead, one half of the building will be shaped like a cylinder, with a 40-foot high ceiling similar to a dome. The second half will be shaped like a cube.

This story, as told by Oscar Fuentes, is part of an oral history series.

It was the summer of 2003; I was living in a very old and ugly apartment building between Biscayne Boulevard and Northeast 2nd Avenue, off of 33rd Street. I had a bitter, mentally unstable landlord that walked around with a concealed weapon. I had a part-time gig at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, now HistoryMiami. I would give guided tours of the permanent galleries and write historical theater scripts for their summer camp program.

Copyright by Judy Blume and used only with her written permission. Not to be further reproduced or distributed except with her permission.

When I was in elementary school, I wrote an "autobiography" called "I Want to Be Like Judy." It had a pink construction paper cover and came in second in the school library contest. I never imagined that 30-something years later, Judy would say to me, "Let's take a selfie!" (See our virtual tour - link below.) I loved all her books, but "Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself" was one of my very favorites. I read it over and over. Ten times? Fifteen?

From the opening pages of poet Richard Blanco’s refreshing memoir, “The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood,” it’s clear that you’re not wandering Calle Ocho in one of those nostalgic, Little Havana paradises that so many Cuban-American chronicles try to recreate.

Say you walk into an office building. On the reception desk is a nice, lush, green-leafed plant with white dots on it. You think, “how nice and outdoorsy.”

Chances are it's a deathly, toxic plant called a "dumb cane."

That's one of the tidbits included in Michael Largo's most recent publication, "The Big, Bad Book of Botany." It’s an encyclopedia-style book about botany sprinkled with surprising, funny and historical tales of plants.

Imagine you’re a college professor driven from your home country on a wave of prejudice and bigotry. You seek refuge in a new country, where you find yourself teaching a group of people subjected to similar intolerance. This nearly forgotten part of 20th-Century history is being revisited now at a Coral Gables Museum exhibit.

10/31/14 - Next time on South Florida Arts Beat, the partnership between sister cities – Nice, France and Miami, Florida, present the Third Miami/Nice Jazz Festival, a month-long celebration of the diversity of Jazz. Founder and CEO, Phillipe Pautesta-Herder brings us the details.

Singer Chris Brown and local artist Ron Bass have collaborated on a mural painted in Overtown on the wall of a restaurant called House of Wings.

It was unveiled Monday -- thanks to the help of Headliner Market Group -- to a crowd of schoolchildren eager to meet Brown, said Nikki Williams, the restaurant owner's sister. City of Miami Commissioner Keon Hardemon was also in attendance.